Stakeholder Relationships

Think about the last time a company emailed you, asking to complete a customer satisfaction survey. You might have seen phrases like, "Help us serve you better," "We want your opinion," or "Your feedback matters to us." Did you fill it out? Most people click through the star rating, skip the open questions, and close the tab. The problem is that these requests often feel like someone else's problem to solve. Now, consider the last time you asked a stakeholder to share post-la

Full transcript of Creative Ops Compass episode 11. Shannon Duncan, Chief of Staff for Marketing at DoorDash, joins Jesse Krinsky to discuss why creative ops should start with people, how to build trust before rolling out process change, and how to protect creative capacity during hypergrowth.

Full transcript of Creative Ops Compass episode 10. Bill Shander, author of Stakeholder Whispering, joins Jesse Krinsky to unpack why stakeholders rarely know what they actually need, how the Socratic method builds trust and clarity, and why AI raises the stakes for creatives who can ask the right questions.

Why Revision Cycles Spiral Most creative leaders already know that excessive revisions aren't usually a quality problem. The bigger issue is clarity and communication: what was asked for, what "done" means, and how feedback gets delivered. They can diagnose the problem. Where it gets hard is building the systems that actually prevent it from recurring. The Brief Was Incomplete When a stakeholder submits a vague request, your team fills in the gaps with assumptions. Some of th

Full transcript of Creative Ops Compass episode 9. Jen Perry, Executive Creative Director at Vagrants, joins Jesse Krinsky to discuss the empathy gap between creatives and stakeholders, what going in-house taught her about business pressures, and practical ways to build empathy on a creative team.